Between Adoption and Rejection The Flying Buttress in 1130s-1150s Architecture

This article aims to evaluate the conditions that determined the precautionary use of the flying buttress on the “Romanesque” naves of Cluny III and Vézelay during the first decades of the 12th century. On this basis, this study deals with “Gothic” monuments with similar structures where the flying buttress was sometimes adopted and sometimes rejected. These comparisons shed light on the debates that exercised the community of builders between the beginning of the twelfth and the beginning of the thirteenth centuries.